The Pundithttps://insightpundit.com
A step into the communications industry...Thu, 16 Nov 2017 20:11:01 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngThe Pundithttps://insightpundit.com
Clarke’s Third Lawhttps://insightpundit.com/2017/08/30/clarkes-third-law/
https://insightpundit.com/2017/08/30/clarkes-third-law/#respondWed, 30 Aug 2017 15:38:43 +0000http://insightpundit.com/?p=1510]]>Working in contemporary technology today is how I imagine it feels when Lewis Hamilton clocks the green light and squeezes the accelerator on his Mercedes AMG at an F1 Grand Prix, there is a frighteningly strong surge and things quickly begin to blur as the speed becomes almost too much to process.

Take any Steve Jobs or Eric Schmidt quote you like, we live in an era of technological advancement the pace of which human civilisation has never known. In the last few years a popular manifestation of this blistering progression has emerged called the Internet of Things which is the generic term for the varied applications of tech connectivity in our daily lives.

However, something which I find is an increasingly common topic of conversation with my clients and colleagues is the mutation of a superficial and frustrating breed of technological progression, think tech for tech’s sake. Clever but useless. Impressive novelties. We’ve all seen them, the connected refrigerators that can match the temperature of your milk with your current emotion. The smart toilet seat, the integrated sock. Lifeless applications of tech.

Despite the incredible minds operating in technology, despite the constantly evolving real world challenges humankind is facing and despite the towers of financial investment in the field we are somehow still subjected to meaningless tech at a frequency which makes me begin to lose faith.

I was in one such a mood last week, no doubt induced by some ridiculous smart kettle that was trying to do my ironing and – in an attempt to cheer myself up, I fired up my Xbox and checked in with the gaming handles I follow on Twitter.

It was at this point that I saw a Tweet by an organisation called SpecialEffect (www.specialeffect.org.uk).

There was a picture of a young boy in front of a screen and the tweet read “Please watch Matt score his first EASPORTSFIFA goal”.

I must confess, with twenty years game-play of EA’s FIFA under my belt I’m slightly obsessed with the franchise and so any mention of it will catch my eye.

I clicked play and my heart exploded.
Matthew has severe athetoid cerebral palsy and quite strong involuntary movements which had prevented him from playing FIFA in the past but I could see from the video that he had some custom controls which had resulted in his magical, top corner goal with the game’s Wayne Rooney avatar.

I related immediately. I myself do not suffer from a disability, I related to Matthew because I too know the joy of pressing the control pad button and unleashing a rocket of a shot which soars past the keeper’s gloves and bulges the net.

I was hugely intrigued. I scrolled and scrolled through SpecialEffect’s Twitter feed and it just kept coming; Alex was playing Minecraft with an eyebrow control, Joseph was using low-force analogue sticks for racing games and Ellie was using foot and head controls to explore the Lego game series.

Countless YouTube stories and testimonials showed that SpecialEffect are a charity who help people with disabilities enjoy video games.

The team produce custom equipment which can use the console or computer’s existing control pad or they can develop something bespoke, all to assist game play. They cater for a huge mix of experiences from world leading titles like EA’s FIFA, first person shooters like Call of Duty or past time games like digital Chess.

SpecialEffect visit people to find out what they want to play, and exactly what they need to play it. They then match, modify or create equipment to lend to them, and give support so they can get the best out of it.

The technological skill doesn’t end at console pad re-configurations, the SpecialEffect team also utilise techniques for gaming via voice or eye control.

Gaming today is one of the most popular activities on earth; the association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE) recently quoted the global gaming population at 2.2 billion. Another example of its dominance was in 2015, the launch of the aforementioned Call of Duty iteration (Black Ops 3) didn’t just beat its game competitors, it surpassed all theatrical box office, music, and book launches that year.

SpecialEffect have simply asked the question, why do those with a disability only get to watch these magical, engaging, virtual worlds? Why can’t they have a go?

It is this questioning which has lead to purposeful technological advancements completely contrasted to those I cited at the start of this story.

The charity is an example of relevant progression, applying technological skill to facilitate something absolutely vital, human joy. In a world obsessed with faux tech, unnecessarily connected things and meaningless novelty, SpecialEffect have hung on to the necessary and the meaningful and have restored my faith.

The title of this story refers to the 1973 quote by futurist writer Arthur C Clarke who said;

So, I’m primed and ready. The next time one of my friends asks me whether I’ve seen that new smart shower that can edit your PowerPoint I’m going to respond by asking whether they’ve seen Holly, who has severe cerebral palsy but will destroy anyone at Forza Motorsport.

]]>https://insightpundit.com/2017/08/30/clarkes-third-law/feed/0ainsightpunditbcA Confucius induced confessionhttps://insightpundit.com/2017/07/26/a-confucius-induced-confession/
https://insightpundit.com/2017/07/26/a-confucius-induced-confession/#respondWed, 26 Jul 2017 15:48:24 +0000http://insightpundit.com/?p=1503]]>I am seven years into a career in research and analysis having worked on some of the world’s largest brands and as I began work on a new Chinese giant this year I thought I was sufficiently educated to guide my client team through the complex and nuanced world of data and insight.

I wasn’t.

Whilst I had lengthy knowledge of the client’s industry, a genuine interest in the client’s brand and a diverse history of relevant techniques for the client, I found I lacked insight on one key part; the client.

My confession is that I did what most people do once they have a few years’ experience in a particular discipline, I leaned on it and applied lessons learnt to this new project, something which has served me well in the past.

As an analyst in the communications and advertising industry, the key aspect of your findings is how you present them, specifically here I am referring to brevity; western analysts are coached in the art of communicating oceans of information in tremendously concise formats. The focus is on simplicity and speed.

This is something I learnt six years ago whilst giving my first boss the results from a report in a very literal elevator pitch; after describing what had been found and what we should do with it, she hit the elevator button again to return to our floor and said, “Now tell me again but using no numbers and language that your grandmother would understand”. We did four journeys in the elevator before I got to a version that was in a state to present to the client.

In the west we are militant about time. This is not exclusive to the field of analysis or even agencies, in general we just “haven’t got the bloody time!” and the by product is that communications are measured on their value per second.

It was this mindset that I applied when I began work with my new Chinese client here at Hill + Knowlton…

“China is one of the hardest working nations on earth” I thought, “my client’s time will be so precious I’ll have to move and communicate more concisely than usual”

“My specific client is rather senior, he won’t need a tour of the methodology and techniques we use, he just needs the useful pearls that we’ve found”

“Our client team has selected us specifically from the other side of the world, we should work hard to show we’re experts and lead the way on the projects”

I was wrong on each count.

As an agency we are becoming hugely invested in China and around this time last month H+K launched the Shanghai Addition at Cannes, a new initiative which looks to bridge this eastern powerhouse of China with markets, audiences and cultures around the world. Watching the agency leadership talk through the Shanghai Addition was my first realisation that my approach may not be as applicable as I’d first thought.

Shortly after the launch in Cannes, H+K welcomed Dr Hong Lu (OBE) and Tim Nash from London School of Economics (LSE) Confucius Institute to dissect the Chinese culture and way of thinking, and the contrasts with my assumptions became more pronounced.

The most profound point that the LSE team raised was to avoid the urge to cut directly to a specific point…

“Chinese culture is about layering, taking the time to build something, together” Mr. Nash told the group, “not being ultra-lean and direct to save time, there’s much weight placed on the time invested in communication”.

As the team spoke, the screens cycled through countless Chinese proverbs which seemed to be in stark contrast to the hard-nosed western commercial mindset.

买卖不成仁义在

(Even if no agreement is reached or deal made, friendship remains).

The LSE team finished by describing that China stakeholders or clients do not tend to want an expert who leads on a specific discipline or field, they’ll almost always want a partner and to be taken on the journey, every step together.

As presentations go it was probably one of the most useful I’ve seen and has armed me and agency colleagues with a deeper understanding of our Chinese partners.

I used to coach junior analysts using the ‘Iceberg’ analogy which describes how the vast majority of an analyst’s work exists below the surface and is never seen, it’s only the most distilled useful part that is presented.

For my China projects I still use the same analogy but I practice standing alongside my client and lifting the whole thing above the surface together.

]]>https://insightpundit.com/2017/07/26/a-confucius-induced-confession/feed/0184710-004-587AA143insightpunditRead All About Ithttps://insightpundit.com/2017/02/06/read-all-about-it/
https://insightpundit.com/2017/02/06/read-all-about-it/#respondMon, 06 Feb 2017 17:49:04 +0000http://insightpundit.com/?p=833]]>I was sat at some communal seating in the restaurant in my office last week when I looked up and saw a familiar face sipping coffee, nibbling a Danish and holding light conversation with a colleague.

Working at a media business this is not uncommon, but for some reason this familiarity was more profound, it was almost like I was looking at a family member. I continued to work and allowed the man’s voice to marinate my subconscious until a statement unearthed itself from my memory, accompanied by trumpets…

“From the headquarters of ITN, the early evening news with Nicholas Owen. Good evening…”.

The casual coffee sipper was Nicholas Owen, ITN anchor of the 1990’s and the voice I would have heard most often whilst tucking into my mothers inedible chilli con carne as a young boy.

Profound feeling? That’s simple nostalgia, I hear you say. That’s what I thought too, at first. But the last few weeks have made me think Nicholas’ voice was a little more serendipitous than I initially realised.

Growing up in Greater Manchester in the 90’s, to me Nicholas Owen was the source. He was the authority from which we learned about current events. Alongside parents and school, a household’s choice of terrestrial TV news outlet was the sole, standardised source of information on which to base opinion on current events.

But hearing Nicholas that day has served to highlight how starkly different the contemporary news landscape is.
Nicholas and the folks at ITN kept it simple; here are the facts as we understand them. Full stop.

Contemporary news has numerous faces and recent political events have emphasised how much this form of communication is splintering even further, the result of which is an immensely challenging landscape.

Now, before we explore these various modern mutations, one could argue that in order to cut-through the complexity of the modern information maze all one need do is consult the bastions of fact like the BBC et al., to which I ask how realistic is that? In our current era of perpetual connectivity and ever changing choice where can we actually gather the facts?

Theoretically, at one end of the scale of fact is ‘Information Liberation’ embodied by profiles like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden who militantly argue that the broadcasting of pure, unfiltered information to give holistic visibility is crucial. This group are otherwise known as the ‘Fifth Estate’.

Perhaps next on this scale are traditional news titles (the Fourth Estate) who also strive to deal only in fact but who are admittedly influenced by other factors like ratings, sales, topicality of content or the occasional D-Notice served to them by government.

Next on the whistle stop tour of refraction is Native Advertising which features the overt promotion of a product or service placed in highly relevant and natural news surroundings. This content is certainly appropriate and informative but has a distinct objective to influence behaviour.

Adopting a more entertaining angle we need to acknowledge the increasingly popular satirical news content. The headlines of The Onion and ClickHole are famed for reflecting the current societal zeitgeist with razor sharp accuracy and as well huge hilarity. So strong is the editorial tone from this type of news that many have fallen fowl to taking it as actual news.

And so the rabbit hole begins to darken…

After listening to an episode of This American Life podcast (‘The Revolution Starts At Noon’) I became aware of another mutation to squeeze onto our scale, perhaps one of the newest mutations; traditionally the group may have been termed ‘lobbyists’ now they come under the label social hackers.
The episode investigated a group of ultra-nationalists turned Twitter trolls who argue they “memed Trump into the presidency by weaponising information”. The group translated Fifth Estate leaks into digestible but contentious viral updates to flood American news feeds with a specific rhetoric.

Recent political shifts have also gave rise to widespread reports of our final and darkest mutation; Fake News. Content hosted by seemingly professional and visually convincing titles that is actually spurious information simply draped in a clever and topical tone. When done in the political arena, some have referred to it by its traditional label of propaganda, but with the proliferation of digital, the line has become blurred.

So we have those battling to bring us the facts and those battling to bring us their facts. For better or worse, news is now owned by everyone now.

The most prominent story to be featured in every single form of mutation we specify on our scale was the recent campaign and inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, given that US candidate campaigns tend to be some of the most covered events on earth, the evaluation of what information people read about The Donald is rather fascinating.

That which is inherent throughout all of the mutations is information, never before has the usage of information been so powerful, beneficial and potentially damaging.
The growth of information with its new, mutating shapes makes the communications industry and challenging but fascinating place to be.

I finished this post last weekend and by Sunday evening I felt the need for a switch off from feeds, screens and data.
I walked to the Tate Britain to quietly walk the gallery before the working week roared into life again.
The first exhibition I came across was a brand new installation entitled ‘WOT U ABOUT?’ by Rachel Maclean (shown below), its a cerebral piece of art depicting our contemporary relationship with information.

The Tate’s description describes how the yellow figures “embody data, feeding a desperate crowd with internet cables until their system is hacked. The figures present a vision of society that is at once seductive and nightmarish”.

As I continued to wander the exhibits, three words bubbled to the front of my mind…
I miss Nicholas.

]]>https://insightpundit.com/2017/02/06/read-all-about-it/feed/0hqdefaultinsightpunditrachel_maclean_we_want_data_2016_courtesy_of_rachel_maclean_c_ra_1screen-shot-2017-01-31-at-14-38-11Seek Leftieshttps://insightpundit.com/2016/10/25/seek-lefties/
https://insightpundit.com/2016/10/25/seek-lefties/#respondTue, 25 Oct 2016 16:52:21 +0000http://insightpundit.com/?p=931]]>Whilst scanning my eyes over the immense scope of a new client project last year I decided we could really use a few young and hungry undergrads to deploy on some of the temporary groundwork. It would be great vocational experience for them and could free up our senior team members.

The easiest way of sourcing such resource is your university professors and after rifling through my gmail address book I contacted one of my favourites from undergrad’ days, we’ll call him Hank.

Given that I’d always admired Hank’s forthright approach I should have foreseen his response; “Of course I’ll send you some CVs, but you have to come and give a guest lecture for me first…”.

I agreed and two days later the train tickets landed on my desk. The brief was short and sweet, “talk to them about anything you like” said Hank, “I can only give them so much, we want to weave live examples into their lectures”.That night I leafed through the student’s curriculum and after four espressos I decided that data and its role in contemporary communications was a decent theme on which to build some slides.

“…but I’ll need to keep it simple, just overviews and synopses” I thought to myself, “I mustn’t scare them, I’ve got to avoid complexity …I wonder if I have any tweed”.

I should note at this stage that this was the first lecture I’d given and on arrival at the business school I was filled with an excitement that I hadn’t felt in any presentations to clients. I met Hank and we enjoyed a catch up over coffee before he led me to the lecture theatre, “It’s our new one!” Hank exclaimed as he scurried excitedly through the atrium, “It’s like Wembley, I’ve never seen anything like it!”.

The door swung open and my nostrils were filled with that lecture theatre smell, I want to say the smell of textbooks and carpets, being fully aware that both of these things are quite odourless but I’m convinced they take on a smell when found in a lecture theatre.

I scanned the rows and saw hundreds of versions of my former self; reading, texting, talking, sleeping, writing, joking and whispering. With the sobering and abrupt sound of Hank clearing his throat into the microphone the theatre fell silent and my jaw tightened a little.It had been a while since I’d addressed such a number of eyeballs and after a warm introduction from Hank I stepped to the podium and was immediately startled by the amplification of my own voice through the speaker system.

My mind whispered that I’d presented to highly senior clients from some of the biggest brands on earth from New York to Seoul, “you can give a lecture to some undergrads” it said.

I got straight into it, citing examples from brands and anecdotes from the industry and began to find my rhythm.

It was at this point that a hand was raised and a student pitched a question, it was similar to a question I’d been asked by a senior client a couple of weeks prior, but it was deeper and from a very different perspective.

I answered it and moved on.

I began a section of the lecture that had taken the most time to simplify, a bit of a thorny area on the pitfalls associated with the contemporary perceptions of data, once again a hand politely rose into the air and some of the complexity I had removed in the prior nights work was pitched back to me by a curious undergraduate.

As the lecture continued, so too did the pattern of fantastic questions. One after the other, the students threw questions that I hadn’t been asked before, genuine curve balls. I began to release more detail in my answers and still the opinions continued, the debate was fresh and new.After a brilliant but challenging 90 minutes I retired to a pub for a debrief and final nostalgic chat with Hank and boarded the train back to London.

As it wound into the countryside I felt tired and began to think about why the undergraduates had been so original. They asked questions without fear and without preconception.

Being in an industry, surrounded by like-minded professionals all working towards the same goals makes us a little numb. I’d been asked to come and give a lecture because of the frame of reference I could provide to the students – but after that 90 minutes was done it was my mind that had been opened.

When I got back into the office the following day my team asked how it had gone and I described my surprise at what had been pitched at me. At this point one colleague gave me the idea for the title of this post, he said;

“The batter on a baseball team always includes a left-handed pitcher in his training regime because Lefties have a natural curve in their throw which makes them incredibly unpredictable. Mate, you had a theatre full of lefties!”.

In our industry, undergraduates are “lefties”, so step up to the plate and test yourself.

Cycling to work through Westminster this morning was no different to the four mornings that preceded it this week, St. James Park swans paddled, cab horns honked and the city fell momentarily silent as I free-wheeled along Horse Guards where all you can hear is the ripple of Union Jack flags in the wind above the parade ground. It was business as usual and as I neared the end of my commute my thoughts wandered to the task of finding a new analyst for our team.

Maybe it was the fact that I’ve cycled the same route for over a year but my mind suddenly jolted into some sort of rewind montage, gathering the same routine sites I witness every morning, mashing them together. This groundhog day moment resulted in a miniature epiphany about Analysts and is the reason for this post.

Every day the Landlady of the Westminster Arms sits in a solitary chair on freshly jet-washed cobbles with a morning cigarette studying the Financial Times through her Dennis Taylor spectacles, evaluating how her shares are performing.

The banker in the double-breasted suit, with side-parted lacquered hair pauses every morning to hunch over the St James’ Lake and meticulously hone his camera lens on the swans movements.

The rear entrance to Number 10 is guarded by two armed Met Police Officers who slowly pace up and down behind the black iron gates, scrutinising the speed of passing vehicles and the backpacks of trudging commuters.

Two site foreman caked in brick dust roll up their sleeves and inspect building plans in Soho as a tower crane swings its load noisily overhead.

Everyone is analysing.

I’ve always viewed of my profession as an Analyst with some exclusivity, feeling lucky to be part of a group of professionals whose job it is to study the complex and unearth the fascinating. But the montage of moments that my mind had stitched together from my commute delivered the realisation that in actual fact, everyone is an Analyst.

This has helped open my mind to the fact that the role of Analyst does not have a specific profile. It’s not one type of personality in an exclusive group.

Previously, I have felt that the role was misinterpreted by some people, or that it was applied to overly broad areas. In short, how can the person interpreting meaning and forming recommendations have the same job as a person coding and mechanising data systems? But asking whether someone is an analyst or not is the wrong question.

Analysis is an innate human trait and it manifests in numerous different shapes, which in my opinion is the beauty of it as a trade.

Let’s flesh out these different characters by looking at some scenarios specifically from the communications industry that called for an Analyst…

The purpose of analysis is to gain accurate and useful understanding of a concept which is not immediately known or available.

The spectrum joins together to understand the problem, to formulate a plan, to extract and compute data and interrogate the result. It joins together to shape the story, to scrutinise the approach, to facilitate understanding and empower one’s peers.

Some inhabit wider areas of the spectrum whilst some specialise in a small corner of it.

In the communications industry, we should avoid preconceptions about what it means to be an Analyst. Research & Analytics is one of the fastest growing disciplines, irrespective of where you sit on the Spectrum.

So we shouldn’t be asking whether someone is an analyst or not, but rather…

What type of Analyst are you?(Imagery: Joe Pearman)

]]>https://insightpundit.com/2016/08/30/837/feed/0Screen Shot 2016-08-30 at 14.15.30insightpunditScreen Shot 2016-08-30 at 13.20.07Twenty Sixteenhttps://insightpundit.com/2016/02/18/twenty-sixteen/
https://insightpundit.com/2016/02/18/twenty-sixteen/#commentsThu, 18 Feb 2016 18:03:45 +0000http://insightpundit.com/?p=276]]>I am currently approaching the final pages of the acclaimed novel Nineteen Eighty Four.
At the age of 28 I am admittedly a little late to the party, but the delay did not affect the impact the story had, and that was to knock me utterly sideways.

The cause of my reaction is shared by countless people who’ve read it before me and that is the startling vision of the book; despite being written in 1966, there are astonishing parallels with today and so many contemporary references have their roots in the story. But it was one particular aspect of Nineteen Eighty Four which I found eerily familiar and was the impetus for this post; the use of technology to analyse people.

For those who have not read it, here’s the 326 pages condensed to 9 lines… Nineteen Eighty Four is famed for being a terrifying warning of what could be if the lower social classes became completely submissive and conditioned by a warped Socialist party to perpetually fund war.
Intense social stratification is practiced with everyone being relentlessly surveilled in their homes and dictated-to by the Ruling Party on behalf of the omnipresent leader, Big Brother.

Leafing through the pages on my commute through London last Monday morning I genuinely began to worry that Orwell really had seen the future and the domineering, controlling group he spoke of was actually personified by todays Analytics industry.

I got off at my stop and felt uneasy, I approached the towering building where I work and thought, “…yeah, pretty similar to ‘The Party’ headquarters”.

On my lunch break I read about Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” which deals with news, entertainment and art in a way that tries to steer and influence mass opinion and I thought “…yeah, thats what we do too, analysing people with a view to influencing them more effectively”.

By midweek I was seeing similarities between Orwell’s Telescreens which watch people and their behaviour and the countless analysis tools which my job involves to find, track and analyse people’s behaviour.
And to top it off, Nineteen Eighty Four plays out in “Airstrip #1”, an island off the west coast of Oceania, formerly named Great Britain.

Thankfully by Friday my girlfriend had reminded me that we do not reside in a dystopian hell and my profession as an Analyst in the communications industry had not been initiated by an author 50 years prior. I continue to irrationally disagree with the latter.

Listed below are some analysis techniques, which do you believe are realities in our 2016 and which are fiction in Orwell’s 1984?

“Biometrics” is the statistical analysis of people’s behaviour or bodily characteristics and includes everything from the tone of our voice, the rhythm at which we type to the patterns of our brain processes.

“Telematics” is the application of telecommunications data and informatics to control vehicles.

“Personal Tracking”: wearable technology which records all aerobic activity and stores it in a central database.

“Human Pattern Recognition”: A type of machine learning which looks for regularities in patterns of peoples movements.

Whilst all of the above sound like something which would be conducted by the Thought Police in Nineteen Eighty Four, they are in fact all a reality being practiced in many sectors today.

The Indian government has implemented the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) which is designed to track the population, assigning a unique 12-digit number called Aadhaar to each individual.
This number holds biometric data (fingerprint, iris and facial), along with demographic data (name, age, gender, address, mobile phone number). Recent quotes suggests that approximately 580M Indian residents now have Aadhaar status.

A few years ago in the UK, Tesco supermarkets and a firm called Dunnhumby established something which can be found in the wallets and purses of many reading this post. A wonderfully simple piece of plastic which records what you buy, when and how often.
When the founders of Dunhumby presented a pilot of their Clubcard data to Tesco’s chairmen Lord MacLaurin his response was thematic of Nineteen Eighty Four; “What scares me about this is that you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years”. Rumours today suggest that Tesco’s Clubcard database conducts such powerful pattern recognition analysis that it can accurately predict any household need from cartons of milk to contraceptives.

Working in the Radio industry I relentlessly gather reams of data to help understand where, how, when and for how long people are listening to a particular radio station. Some tools gather and bucket people into broad trends and others allows me to locate individual people tuning in anywhere in the world. Ultimately, this allows us to offer a more individual Radio experience.

So its safe to say there is a stark likeness between the book and our reality. Admittedly twenty sixteen society is a little different to Nineteen Eighty Four, the UK is not a horrific dictatorship which wipes out free thought. But our constant obsession with analysing each other is dramatically similar and incredibly, Orwell’s mind painted our world over 50 years before it arrived.

In a way, the Analyst in me feels a guilty attraction to elements of Nineteen Eighty Four because the attention to human detail and pattern is so akin to how I spend my days.

But I suppose we should continue to treat the novel as a warning of the potential danger of analysing too many humans, gaining too deep a view of behaviour.

On this note its appropriate to end on todays news story that Apple CEO Tim Cook has refused to give personal information from an individual’s iPhone to the US federal government.
On reading the news article, someone in the office said “this is great, I like that Big Brother doesn’t get to control the contents of our electronic lives”, which I suppose is true, as long as Apple isn’t Big Brother…

]]>https://insightpundit.com/2016/02/18/twenty-sixteen/feed/1640_biometric-eyeinsightpunditThe Other Sidehttps://insightpundit.com/2015/12/21/the-other-side/
https://insightpundit.com/2015/12/21/the-other-side/#respondMon, 21 Dec 2015 17:03:48 +0000http://socialpundit.wordpress.com/?p=211]]>I have recently stepped over to the ‘other side’ in my career, after five years in ad agencies, I dived head first into client-side! (Cue dramatic piano chords).

It was a strange feeling. Agencies are all I’ve known or wanted to know since graduating university in 2010, but five months ago, like some sort of adland Gollum, I heaved open the heavy agency front door and peered anxiously into the daylight.
My chief concern being whether or not the highly honed (Analytics) skills I had so proudly developed in the rooms of London agencies would prove only applicable-in agencies!

This fear is not unfounded; all of the elements which make agency life so unique and wonderfully challenging; the constant survival mode, the theatrical, provocative approach to everything, are the very same elements that can foster a sort of “adland” mind-set. A sort of advertising “Stockholm syndrome”, that this is the best way, the only way.

So with trepidation, in the August sunshine, having shed my blazer and Nikes, I heaved open the (equally heavy) door of my new offices, ironically nestled in London’s theatrical west-end, stepped inside and became… a client!

After four months I can safely say the two worlds are just as starkly different as the stereotypes suggest.
Putting aside the immediate contrast in that, as yet, I have not seen anyone with a handlebar moustache, sauntering around in a pair of flip-flops with a Sharpie pen barking eccentric tag lines. No, the primary change I have registered was in my field of data & analytics.

When it comes to agency analytics my experience has told me that it is no different to any other agency offering, it is deemed just as important as Account Management, Creative, or Development and so it is included on the client estimate, assigned a monetary value. And here is where the core difference exists; in agencies analytics is primarily business – it is another agency commodity. In client-side analytics there is not the same insistence to apply the £ to everything. I do not say this with praise or with criticism, but as an observation.

There is a break-neck urgency within agencies which is born from the need to generate money and continue to exist. In the same way that history tells us technology advances fastest during times of war due to the drive to adapt and survive, the same is true in agencies. The sheer necessity to survive means evolution is commonplace.
This leads to real strengths, especially in the field of analytics; I believe agencies are positioned closer to the ‘bleeding edge’ of data progress, that is to say the more ‘ballsy’, provocative approaches will more often be flighted in agencies.

In client side analytics, I have not found the same blinding urgency, the screaming rev counter is replaced with quiet composure, a composure born from the security of having enough money, enough resource and enough know-how to execute something properly. This composure fosters its own strengths, here I reference the depth and degree of detail at which client-side analysts can work. “Hypothesis”, “Continual” and “Tested” are words often deprioritised in agencies due to the lack of time or intense rigidity of agreed proposals, but they are crucial to robust analysis, something which I have only really appreciated since working client-side. There is a credence to the insight generated on this side of the fence which is iron-clad.

In taking the plunge into a client role and acknowledging the distinction(s), you will defuse the fear of the Other Side. The real challenge comes in morphing the two… In my opinion the world beating analyst is one who’s insight is forged with high-octane, revolutionary (agency) thinking, but executed and dissected with clinical (client-side) methodology.

Take Our Poll]]>https://insightpundit.com/2015/12/21/the-other-side/feed/051.507351 -0.12775851.507351-0.127758insightpunditScreen Shot 2015-12-21 at 16.00.24E pluribus unumhttps://insightpundit.com/2015/06/17/e-pluribus-unum/
https://insightpundit.com/2015/06/17/e-pluribus-unum/#respondWed, 17 Jun 2015 11:30:26 +0000http://socialpundit.wordpress.com/?p=191]]>In the summer of 2009 when the Coalition’s War in Afghanistan was at its height, after months of tiresome work, a group of United States military strategists finally clicked save and print on their document; what they had created was a chart, one which synopsised the Coalition’s strategy in the nation of Afghanistan. Here it is…

Around one year later when the document surfaced in the media, it was picked up by the New York Times who wrote a story about the “chart’s” negative reception. The issue being; it is too complicated for the most senior of military Generals to understand, let alone anyone “on the ground” having to roll it out.

This is an easy mistake to make; when working in strategy and analytics, one can move from simplistic concept to information paralysis very quickly.
Some may question me likening the military occupation of a country to the advertising industry but I do so because they share the same undeniable focus on strategy.

In recent years, the proliferation of technology, coupled with the availability of fearsome amounts of data has armed the ad industry with very sophisticated capabilities in the field of strategy and measurement. The number of “moving parts” in a contemporary ad campaign can sometimes feel like that of a space shuttle.

Gone are the old days where a big budget + stylish artwork = campaign success, today’s advertisers have the science of Behavioural Economics and Psychology to apply to their work.
There are models to use and methodologies to apply. There are phases to plan and tiers to define. There are channels to layer, customers to segment, behaviour to research, culture to analyse, performance to forecast, tools to select and returns to calculate.
It is a vast puzzle which has one sweet-spot, one combination for genuine success. The hardest act is to distill all this intelligence into one, short, meaningful solution, one entity which represents the informed direction of everything… the strategy.

A common side effect from this wealth of opportunity is utter confusion; the desire to inform overrides the ability to curtail and even the strongest strategic direction is lost in an ocean of charts, shapes and words all neatly arranged over 3,000 PowerPoint slides.

I am yet to be a “client” in my career, I have spent my time thus far in agencies, but one thought I frequently have is that if I were a client, I would be militant in my demand for simplicity especially with strategy.
Strategy and analytics is often viewed as the intimidating part of a campaign, the grand, theoretical ideas are deemed too “intangible” and the reams of data are “incomprehensible”, and this is true – but only if we as Planners and Analysts allow them to become this.

There’s an analogy which likens strategy to an iceberg because the majority of its mass is not immediately visible – but is still substantial in size and influence over its visible part.

The key here is ensuring only the necessary parts are made visible. If we over egg a strategy, it just becomes a commentary on ideas and our client disconnects.
In my short five year career so far I have watched immensely intelligent people, armed with iron-clad, compelling insight completely blur a client’s view by over complicating things.

The solution to this problem is empathy; all we need to do is remember one emotion which we all experience; insecurity. Every human being whether a CEO, Data Scientist or Runner holds the insecurity of not knowing the answer. Richard Branson once discussed the “fear of being found out”, that someone would arrive and take it all away because he had been “masquerading” as someone who understood.

If we scare a client with things which look clever and technical – they’re not likely to enjoy the work.
If we empower a client with things that are simple and solid they’re more likely to extend that monthly retainer.

Keeping it simple can quash insecurity and promote bravery and willingness in our teams, because we remove that fear of the secret language that “you don’t speak!”.

If we view it as an opportunity cost, the power of everyone in a meeting understanding your strategy far outweighs the admiration you may receive for delivering a super-clever, intellectual ball of rubber bands.

It’s the hardest part to distill intelligence into a singular strategic direction, but it is crucial.

As I began this article on United States politics, it feels fitting to end on it too. Senator Barrack Obama used a Latin phrase in his famous Hope Speech prior to taking office which holds relevance in this discussion…

So then, a range of people and a range of distinct answers, all arguably correct in their own right.
But for me, the most powerful answer came from the same professor who’d originally asked me all those years ago, his answer was “visibility”.
At first I didn’t buy this, but the more I think about it, the stronger it becomes.

Alan the farmer doesn’t know the value of his acres if he doesn’t have a RICS Farmland survey.

Sayid the stockbroker cannot valuate companies if he doesn’t have CityIndex information about the markets.

Alistair the recruiter cannot find the best candidate without knowledge of skills, salaries and unemployment.

Franky the copywriter cannot craft the right tone without understanding who she’s talking to and how they tend to react.

However, despite being so crucial, visibility is something I find is undervalued in the industry of advertising. At times, we quite literally give it away.

Ask any in the industry and they will agree that visibility i.e. measurement and reporting on performance is often given to clients as a “gift”, an “added bonus”, free of charge or worst of all, not offered at all.
I am lucky enough to work at an agency who genuinely value visibility but in the past I’ve been exposed to some incredibly large and influential global organisations who simply ignore the need to know how things are going, ignore visibility.

There are two main causes of this; (a) the client and/or agency lack confidence in the work and so assume the stance of ignorance is bliss, “we spent a lot so it must have gone really well”. Cause (b) is over complicating visibility, approaching it with such trepidation that Account Handlers prefer to sweep it beneath the carpet than frighten a client with it on a cost sheet.

This is something we need to change.

There is a famous saying, the author of which varies depending on where you reside in the world, in the UK William Lever (founder of Unilever) said it, in the States it was the automotive pioneer Henry Ford. Whomever first uttered the phrase, it remains powerful today “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted, the problem is I don’t know which half”.

My past three years have been spent understanding what success and effectiveness look like for brands, and then commoditising the means to measure it. As agencies it is our responsibility to provide proper visibility to the client, and it is the client’s responsibility to value this enough to pay for it.

Whilst I attack the industry mind-set on the concept of visibility it is necessary to reference those who have embraced it and lead the way; the likes of Jay Walter Thompson (JWT) and Abbot Mead Vickers (AMV BBDO) place measurement at the core of their work and their resultant industry awards are testament to this.

These agencies can offer guidance, but there are other areas of society where the power of visibility is undeniable.

In 2010 the Wall Street Journal reported that average global daily trading topped $6,000,000,000,000 (trillion), this was done by gaining visibility over the immense number of variables moving at a rapid pace in the market.

Last year the British Home Secretary Theresa May reported that the UK Security Services had foiled over 40 terrorist plots since the 7/7 bombings. This was done by analysing intelligence, thus gaining visibility of the immensely complex and hidden events occurring.

These are areas which advertising can learn from.

As I’ve said in previous posts, advertising trades in the most complicated commodity known to man; human cognition. So we should be pushing the envelope with how to gain visibility on this. Let’s borrow from stockbrokers, brain surgeons and spooks to become the masters of visibility.

But most importantly, lets provide our clients with such useful visibility that they’re willing to pay for it.

]]>https://insightpundit.com/2015/04/20/cloudy-with-a-chance-of-revenue/feed/0insightpunditBINOS458LVRHRYFDLong live the Juddermanhttps://insightpundit.com/2015/03/26/long-live-the-judderman/
https://insightpundit.com/2015/03/26/long-live-the-judderman/#respondThu, 26 Mar 2015 17:34:50 +0000http://socialpundit.wordpress.com/?p=162]]>When quizzed about why they do the job they do, many people may not be able to recall a specific reason let alone a decisive moment in time. I am not one of these people…

It was October 1998, I was 10 years old.
I had returned home from swim practice and after consuming my “reward dinner” of jacket potato with cut-up ham, myself and my sister sat like so many our age, gazing at the TV. It was during an ad break when a Public Information Film (PFI) crept discreetly onto the screen.
Here it is…

By the time the black end-frame emerged, I was influenced. Whether it was the narrator’s clever misdirection or the girl’s blood curdling scream, I had been emotionally jolted, out of my gaze, almost out of my seat.

Leaving you with the visual of me sat in my Manchester United pyjamas, clutching a half eaten KitKat, mouth agape in horror; I now fast-forward to present day to tell you why I’m writing about this early experience.

Working in advertising, you learn there are a variety of different approaches one can take to communicate a proposition and a simple way to categorise these straight off the bat is either Emotional or Rational.
Within the ‘Emotional Communication’ category lives the type of advert which had influenced me so tremendously as a youngster, the shock tactic.

As a 27 year old I still believe this type of ad to be the most interesting and compelling. The type which makes you grind to a halt whilst leafing through a magazine…

People In Need

Innocence in Danger

National Health Service (NHS) UK

Crisis Relief

Moms Demand Action

…or leaves you with a knot in your stomach far into the next part of your sitcom. This is what communications are about, moving people.

To explore this a little more, I have collated some of the most exceptional and acclaimed examples of disturbing and shocking advertising; they have all achieved different awards be it a citation in the Warc Top 100, an IPA Effectiveness Award or a Cannes Creativity Award.

…But, (like the print ads above) they all share a common element… do you notice what?

They all have an informative, benevolent, humanitarian message from a charity or government department. These ads are for non-profit organisations, concerned with bigger concepts than sales.

This has sparked a thought for me; is the disturbing ‘shock tactic’ only acceptable if the proposition is about donating to charity, driving slower or quitting smoking? Or are we just as receptive when the shock tactic is used for commercial gain?

To answer this question, I have selected two examples of commercial brands using shock tactics, the brands are obviously not looking to shift a societal behaviour about safety or charity, but shift product…

So, we have an unsettling ice cream brand and haunting alcohol brand, both of whom are attempting to gain customers on a deep, hedonistic level, how were they received?
They generated much more controversy than their public sector counter parts.

Bacardi’s Judderman was banned after parents complained to the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the spot was frightening children. The spot was also voted the “Scariest Ad of All Time” in a UK poll.

Little Baby’s Ice Cream attracted similar drama with their subliminal, abstract spot featuring “Malcolm”, the asexual ice cream being who consumes himself. The web is awash with opinion, some YouTube broadcasters created specific “Little Baby’s Ice Cream Reaction” videos and common adjectives associated with this creative include “cannibalistic… horrific… creepy… sickening”.

Why are these adverts less palatable than watching a father scream for help clutching his dying son in an empty park? Or watching a boy crush his mother to death in a car crash?

It is arguable that the philanthropic nature of public sector awareness films (about safe driving or charitable donations) mean they can push the shock scale further than any commercial brand would be allowed, without the risk of complaints.

But I feel those looking to sell products should be permitted to shock us too.

Advertising is a derivative of the Latin “ad vertere” meaning to turn toward something, its about magnetism and sometimes the best way to do that isn’t with a functional product description or colourful and juicy discount, its with something which plays with our emotions, both positive and negative.

I began this post with reams of research, from psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s work on brain activity, “instinctive versus rational brain signals” to studies on censorship and the ASA’s criteria for banning adverts.

…But in fact I didn’t need any of this reading and note making, my point is simple; 17 years ago someone’s bold, shocking style influenced me. Today I am part of that bold industry and I want to see such daring communications applied to more types of client.